The present invention relates to messaging systems, but more particularly to a method and an apparatus that provide cross-management of voice mail and email messages.
In communication networks, some messaging systems allow subscribers to receive messages of different type by accessing, for example, only one of his or her voice mail and email servers when the two servers were linked together. Retrieving them was sometimes inconvenient because neither messaging system provided updating of the status of messages on one messaging system that were already retrieved from the other messaging system. For example, if a user retrieves, using an email service, a transcribed voice mail message and deletes the email message after retrieval, the original voice mail message would still be considered a new message on the voice mail system. The user must manually effect deletion of the messages on the voice mail server, or deal with the potential confusion of not knowing which voice mail messages are actually new, or which voice mail messages have actually been retrieved through the email service.
To help address some of these concerns, U.S. Pat. No. 5,647,002 by Brunson discloses a system for synchronizing different types of mailboxes. The Brunson patent describes a synchronizer that synchronizes separate email and voice mail mailboxes.
The present invention, however, better addresses synchronization concerns by providing an integrated message management system allowing more direct control of the synchronization process. The present invention also provides an advance in the art by additionally detecting the on-line presence of a subscriber in providing message notification.